Gretchen Cope

When I went to college, my grandpa wrote me a note to take with me. In addition to his well wishes, was a piece of advice I'd heard a million times before: work hard and be proud. Growing up, I never had the option to give what I did anything less than my best effort. Putting in the extra hours on the soccer field, showing up to track practice early to work on technique, attending office hours for advanced classes in middle and high school, and applying for my first job at 15 years old, were all the norm. While the work I did sometimes felt repetitive, unnecessary or simply too hard, I continued with words of encouragement from my family echoing in my head. Just as important as the hard work, was taking time to acknowledge and be proud of that which I'd done. So by the time August 2015 rolled around, working hard and being proud of it was engrained in me. The simple reminder in the note from my grandpa serves as way for me to check-in on myself when the many aspects of college life are overwhelming.

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Working hard and being proud have proved to be integral pieces in my evolving definition of leadership. Of course it is important to practice each of these as a leader for our own selves, but even more so, it is important to encourage others - the "followers" - to do the same. When a leader encourages others to contribute to a project and tells the followers that they (the leader) believe in the followers/their hard work, it makes all the difference. I've seen this to be true in my time as president of Relay for Life at CU. Few things brought me more joy this year as a member of the Relay committee than seeing other members feel proud of themselves after I recognized them at a group meeting. I truly believe that leadership requires encouragement and building people up--two things I'm grateful to have been able to do with the Relay committee.